


What's In A Name?

by Breezytealy



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Saiyan Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27069655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Breezytealy/pseuds/Breezytealy
Summary: Vegeta tells tales of Eschalot, Bra's Saiyan namesake. Trunks has burning questions of his own.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40





	What's In A Name?

The afternoon's deluge, unusual for January's dry season, came on sharp. Despite all received wisdom on the physics of falling water and its tendency to make things wet, Trunks took the opportunity to nudge open the set of balcony doors closest to him. The overhang at the back of Capsule Corp's main building kept most of the water screen away, but a growing puddle formed of innocent-seeming splashes had already amassed by the door, threatening to find a way across the threshold and earn him a talking to. He welcomed the rush of cooled air though; it ruffled pages in folder-upon-folder of study notes piled high on the low coffee table, carrying with it the earthy, metallic scent of freedom that seemed so alien to Trunks these past months. 

But opening the door only delayed his torture five seconds. His anxiety rose again tide-like as he sunk back into the plush armchair, his study-stress nest his entire world recently. Fat rain rapped the two-storey high wall of glass, resonating in the den like a drum roll; the Heavens eagerly anticipating Trunks finally opening the practice test paper he held with both hands. 

"West City University Entrance Examination: Mathematics (Science stream) - MOCK." The aptly named paper had been taunting him for over an hour. Trunks must have read the title a million times by now, hoping beyond hope he could tire the name and therefore paper into non-existence. Opening the page would begin the ninety-minute timer, and a countdown to the answer of whether he had a hope in Hell of getting into West U. Anyone within the city limits knew he would roll out of bed and into the top ranks, which is exactly why Trunks was assured of his upcoming failure. Yet, maddeningly, he felt the need to try in the run up, because if he didn't check how bad his performance could be in two weeks time, he wouldn't know precisely how many light years he'd have to book it for safety's sake.

He stared at the paper. The paper stared back, daring him. He pinched the page, readying himself to tear away the uncertainty. The drumroll kicked up a gear.

But the perfect excuse to ignore his predicament materialised today in the form of Bra. His sister - at the far end of the den being minded by their father - had given up on Quiet Time, deserting the colouring crayons and her masterpieces strewn across the dining table to climb atop their father's head. Barely secure across his shoulders, she began to screech a poorly remembered song about an old cat wandering the city at night. The rain tried its best, but was unable to drown out the wailing.

_"Thinking, I'm loam-son in streetlights…"_

Never mind the fat ladies, when Bra sang everything was over, and that included optimal test conditions. Against the background din Trunks gladly admitted defeat by dropping the paper, picking up instead his folder of notes on trigonometric identities, his eyes blurring at the wall of sines, tangents and cosecants to protect him. Bra and his father were far more interesting to watch anyway, like some nature documentary with a boisterous lion cub badgering a parent with a dwindling fuse. But opportune moments for Vegeta to snap his jaws came and went - Bra's attempt at a key change being one of them - and Trunks' suspenseful excitement over surely witnessing an award-winning blow-up faded. Pity. If this were fourteen years previous, Trunks would be running screaming already. Bra had no idea how good she had it.

_"And the bees, begin to blow…"_

"Bra. Sit." Vegeta grasped her waist with both hands to flip her over his head, rendering her upside down. He glared, his firm but gentle demeanour very much a resigned lion carrying a cub in its jaws instead of the chaos Trunks had hoped for. "You're disturbing your brother," their father said, but she giggled and screeched without apology. She loved being upside down, everyone knew that, that was her one consistent like these days. No sooner had their father expressed his lacklustre displeasure and returned her to the chair next to him, pushing the blue crayon back into her hand, Bra - melting into sheer silk - slipped off her chair to disappear under the table. Within moments she was back behind Vegeta and climbing again, this time regaling them with a mournful verse about a smiling moon.

"Eschalot." Vegeta's sharp use of Bra's Saiyan name had the intended effect. She froze, curiosity piqued, the high note she warbled straining and fading to blissful peace. Trunks held his own breath; a familiar, sad pang in his chest doing the work. "Your song reminds me of Eschalot's victory at the battle of Chaado's Fork. Do you want to learn about it?"

With reverent silence Bra nodded, sliding off Vegeta's chair back and climbing into his lap. Vegeta found a blank page and the blue crayon, and began to sketch. 

"Chaado's Fork was a split in the river, a hundred kilometres North of Sadala's Chief Capital City, and it was there that Eschalot, low on men and supplies, was chased by the conscript army of the false King Futsuru. The river rampaged all around, the army was at her back. As good as her remaining men were, there were less than a dozen, and hundreds were ready to skewer her for supporting the true King Sadala. There was no escape."

"Oh no!" Bra, entranced at the historical field report masquerading as a fairytale, picked up her own crayon, scribbling helpful additions to Vegeta's battle diagram. "That's really scary."

"Very." Vegeta changed his crayon colour to cream. "But Eschalot had a back-up plan, one her men were ready for and their pursuers not. With a great howl - much like your exquisite howling just now - Eschalot called forth the Full Moon."

Bra eyes widened to the possibilities. "She magicked it?"

"So they say. Eschalot's men were trained in the ways of the Oozaru and kept their minds. But Futsuru's men, drawn from the lower classes, could not maintain composure, so rampaged. Those that could had to fight their comrades and Eschalot's men in equal measure. Eschalot won the battle within the hour, and was able to ford the river in her Oozaru form, dragging the broken body of Futsuru's best general to toss at King Sadala's feet." 

Vegeta waited for coos that did not come. Lost on some of the technicalities, Bra was instead eagerly waiting for a more appeasing end to the story. "They… they say Chaado's Fork was covered in a beautiful blanket of Field's Bloom, Eschalot's flower, for decades after," he added, and was relieved to see her re-engage.

"She had a flower?" 

"An important flower. They say it bloomed in the wake of her every victory." Vegeta rummaged through the pile of crayons, finding a deep red, and ever-green. "The flower, the size of your palm, had six pointed blood-red petals and a head smaller than your thumbnail, and each flower stem had two big leaves." Their father smirked - no, actually smiled - watching Bra feverishly copy his drawing. "But, _this_ " - he scribbled something with the red crayon - "is a quicker way to draw Field's Bloom. Where have you seen this before?"

Bra fidgeted in her deliberation, humming and tilting the page until suddenly her face lit in recognition. "Trunks' room!" she said with a sunny giggle.

Trunks leapt to his feet. Curiosity whisked him to the dining table in moments, his notes still in hand, all pretence of study lost. What did she mean, his room?

Vegeta chuckled. "That's true, though I hoped you'd remembered it from my armour."

Surrounded by rivers and warrior stick-figures and Bra's attempt at a bridge, his father had drawn a flower - much like the clematis climbing the walls in his Grandfather's inside garden, but with spikes on each petal. Next to it, in red crayon, was the royal crest of Vegeta's line. The same crest hung above Trunks' headboard, stitched in red on a black velvet banner. The crest had graced the margins of every notebook he'd ever owned, including the first page of notes he currently held.

"This," Vegeta said, tapping the page, "is my family's sigil. It's yours, too."

Bra's face screwed up in suspicion. "What's a sijul?"

"A seal. A crest."

"Dad's logo." Trunks added. Bra nodded at that.

"It's a pretty logo," she said. "Prettier than Mom's."

Trunks rolled his eyes. A flower, honestly. His father's lies were going to cause him all sorts of trouble. "It's not pretty, it's _cool_."

"It's pretty _and_ cool, duh," Bra said. Trunks started. That was a new insult. Their father let it pass without comment. Bra sloppily copied the crest onto a fresh piece of paper with, Trunks noted with much disdain, a worn-down pink crayon. "I want it on my wall, too," she said, "bigger than Trunks' picture."

"Then go ask your mother" - Vegeta lifted Bra, complete with blueprints clutched to her chest, from his lap - "and tell her all about Eschalot's win."

Bra sped from the Den with a determined pitter patter of steps and without further acknowledgement of Trunks and their father. Her wolf-like howls, this time deliberate, echoed in the cavernous corridors beyond.

"She's not going to stop until the Moon rises," Trunks said with weary resignation. The staff already thought their family feral.

"A small price to pay to get her elsewhere. Now, study." 

Trunks instinctively winced. Great. Even his father knew how to crank the pressure. Instead of obeying, Trunks sat down opposite, desperate to continue this relative warmth and openness he'd caught his father in, and maybe work up the courage to ask the question the earlier pang had yet again sparked - though he placed his folder on the table as though readying himself to begin the work he knew wasn't happening today.

"When are you going to tell her the truth? About the crest?" Trunks added at Vegeta's questioning eyebrow.

"It's a sigil. Sigils carry power. I told the complete truth."

"You told me it represented weaponry."

Vegeta took up his blue crayon again to sketch, and despite himself Trunks leant over, tilting his head to right the image somewhat. "The crescent," Vegeta said, "represents Sadala's barbed demilune - to pin and slice foes who struggle. The three prongs and stripes are the strapped trident of Vegeta - used to impale foes after judgement." The two weapons flanked the red crest. "I remember the lesson. I also spoke truth. I didn't tell you about Field's Bloom because you would have scoffed, like Bra would have learning the nuances of polearms."

Trunks considered his own repulsed response moments ago, and thought it a fair comment. Still. "Bra would surprise you. She's quite..." Trunks pictured her maniacal grin when play-fighting with Pan. "...bloody-minded," was what he settled on.

"If she's less sensitive than you, then maybe I won't wait until she's nineteen to tell her the other meaning. Or more about the flower. Oddly, she was right to draw the sigil in pink. That is the flower's natural colour."

"You're kidding." Trunks could hear Goten's laughter already ringing in his head. 

Vegeta smirked, or was that a smile, too? "Even a light blue, depending on the soil." He leant over the table conspiratorially. "Only when steeped in soil rich with the dead will the flower come through blood-red. To pick a bloodied Battlefield's Bloom gained you instant recognition as a venerable warrior. I understand Eschalot carried the seeds with her as a calling card."

"Battlefield's Bloom," Trunks repeated. The full story made far more sense, the manufacture of dead bodies being the Saiyan raison d'etre. The crest was both a mark of power and assured victory, then. "I take it Eschalot didn't raise the Moon."

"Most likely not. Although that is how the legend was taught to me. She did win the historical battle, and Sadala appointed her to his Kingsguard for that feat. She led the warriors who stayed behind in planet Sadala's last moments to ensure their King and his favoured subjects, including our ancestors, left the planet safely."

"What else did she do?" Trunks' heart beat in his throat. It wasn't the question he wanted to ask. He'd heard plenty enough stories about Eschalot garbled from Bra, but Trunks had to keep him talking.

Vegeta hesitated. "This old ritual may sound disturbing to you, but it was recognised by Saiyans as a good thing, so keep that in mind and do not tell your sister." He waited for Trunks to agree before continuing. "Eschalot was conceived from a tryst, common enough for Saiyans, but her parents were sworn and true adversaries. Upon hearing Eschalot's mother was pregnant, and fearing rightly her mother would use his own strength against him by raising Eschalot as his enemy, her father laid siege to the city. Eschalot's mother held out with great courage, but the father waited until she was in labour to attack, discounting the protective rage a Saiyan's mother exhibits against the father during birth. Eschalot's mother killed the father in one-on-one combat, and in recognition of her daughter's role, her mother bathed Eschalot in his blood. This was recorded as Eschalot's first kill." 

Vegeta was almost wistful in his retelling and Trunks found that more disturbing than the baptism. "Bra would love that story," he said in an attempt to be supportive.

"That's what concerns me. I do at times value my life." Vegeta shook his head. "I keep many inspirational stories from her. For example, some stories say she had an elder brother from another tryst who supported Futsuru, and who she put down."

"Yikes... I'll have to watch out next time we vote on a restaurant!" 

Trunks tried a comradely laugh, hoping for rapport, but Vegeta cleared his throat, done and readying to leave.

"Why - you were named after the planet, right? Does the word mean anything?" That wasn't the right question either; Trunks had chickened out, but it bought him time. Vegeta settled back into his seat with only a flash of irritation.

"Wrong way round. The planet was renamed after my great grandfather when he defeated the Tuffles, his son was named for him and so on to me." Vegeta looped one arm over the chair back, tapping the crayon on the table. His frown grew, brow casting a sullen shadow. "I'm unsure of the name's origin." Trunks had uncovered a sore point, a painful gap in his father's memory that would never heal, and he could see his father recoiling from reality, closing up. The opportunity was slipping.

"Do you know why he renamed the planet, though? Seems confusing to have so many Vegetas." Changing tack was enough to distract Vegeta from his malaise. Trunks made sure to sit straight, giving his fullest and sincerest attention. Appeased, Vegeta idly began to draw; an arc, a bisection, points - his crest.

"There's a lot of power in a name, boy. A well-chosen name can connect us to our people and channel the strength of our ancestors. To rename a planet in the name of the ruler is to own the power of the very planet and all life it sustains, and through the ruler pass that strength to their subjects. It is planetary subjugation, pure and simple. Likewise, subjugation of an enemy can be as simple as renaming them to cut their historical ties and bind their power to you." Vegeta pressed the crayon a little harder on the page, colouring in the trident a thick, waxy crimson. "Kakarot never understood that. Sadala's demilune and the Field Bloom are invoked with the sigil in the same manner. My naming was not a lack of imagination but a royal right."

That was new - both in information and vulnerability - and Trunks should have been pleased, but watching his father draw filled Trunks with a cold, dulled grief. Despite the depth of reasoning and importance behind the crest, Trunks suspected his father drew it for the same reason he did; no matter the vividness of the story threads his father could weave together to produce a cultural tapestry, the finished piece would always be full of holes. The only element they could be sure had remained unchanged by faulty memory was the design of that crest. Knowing that, and knowing it was his family's, provided some comfort for Trunks, so for his father…

In that moment of true connection, Trunks finally found the courage to ask the painful question he'd been biting back ever since Vegeta whispered the name 'Eschalot' into a bundle of blankets.

"Dad." Trunks' voice caught, which he prayed wouldn't be taken as weakness. "Why did you never think of a name for me?"

Vegeta harrumphed, parrying the question's thrust. "Your mother dealt with that one."

"A Saiyan name, though. Why didn't you give _me_ a Saiyan name?"

Vegeta double took, radiating surprise. Trunks knew it was a cruel question to ask, born ultimately of a resurfaced kind of spite he thought he'd buried years ago. He already knew why he didn't have a name, and knew why today, with Trunks a man grown, was the closest they'd ever got to colouring together. But whilst he'd accepted the latter as a function of his father's past far worse standoffishness, Trunks had yet to hear the former and deeper rejection acknowledged from the man himself.

"You disappoint me. Such jealousy over a five year old, how absurd." Vegeta tossed the crayon and folded his arms, abandoning another crest mid-prong. "I named Bra 'Eschalot' so she would channel the strength of the Kingsguard. She was named with that purpose in mind, nothing more."

The heat left Trunks' chest and ran to his face. He should have kept his mouth shut. "I'm sorry, Sir -"

"But you." Vegeta sighed, and to Trunks' bewilderment his father held him with gentle regard, not the anger he'd first feared. "It is true that I dismissed you at birth and did not press to name you. It was because I believed you, a mere Earthling-blooded child, could never be worthy of a Saiyan heritage. I was wrong. From youth you have wielded a strength so great I can only understand it as the channelled spirit of your ancestors and the very planets they ruled combined. Despite my initial feelings on the matter, the Universe saw fit to bind us. You are my eldest and heir, and given all I've said - you still wonder what your name is, boy?"

The rain hammered across the silence, Trunks' mind spun. All this time... "You've never called me that."

"Do you need your hand held in all matters? Why ever would I want to sound like I'm talking to myself? 'Boy' has always sufficed for you, as it did for me. Now." Vegeta stood, chair scraping back, and Trunks followed suit, still in dizzied shock. "I grow tired of this sham interrogation. You've dithered around your studies long enough. Hurry up with it and leave me to my old age."

"Yessir. Of course, thank you, I… Thanks Dad." Trunks' voice caught again, the cold hollow he'd sensed in his chest for so long filling with gratitude.

"Cut that cloying sentimentality before I petition the Universe to change its mind." But there was that creeping lop-sided smile again, appearing too fast for Vegeta to hide with his upturned nose and quick march out the den.

Trunks' feet were rooted for a long while, the jelly in them eventually wobbling its way to his face and a tickled laugh escaped him. Of course that's what his name would be, it was so simple, but he'd never have believed the truth if he'd heard it from anyone else. He scooped up his notebook and returned to the breeze and the rain and his study nest by the open doors. He finally felt the refreshment he'd long craved.

The test paper still teased, but quieter now, the pages feeling smaller somehow. He drew the crest - no, the _sigil_ \- on the math paper's title page, taking great care with the line weights and symmetry for the first time. Saiyans may not have been known for their academics, but as he worked he recalled his father's stories of battles long past like a prayer, hoping for the protagonists' courage to find him, and in turn to make them proud. 

Prince Vegeta, fifth of his name, set a timer for ninety minutes. He turned the page.


End file.
